Free Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) by Susan Fanetti Page A

you… … …”—he closed his eyes and tried to find the words he wanted, and, again, she waited, with no sign of impatience—“…need to say it. …Tell me…her.”
     
    Her eyes went even wider and seemed to glisten, almost like tears had washed in. She smiled and laid her other hand over his.
     
    Then she told him about her mother. The woman she loved, not the stroke victim.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    They ate about half the pizza, while Tina did most of the talking and Joey most of the listening. When she asked him questions, she tried to ask questions that could be answered without words, or those that came in series, with simple responses building up a more involved answer. That might have been her training as a therapist. It probably was. He didn’t want her to do therapy on him, but it was nice to be with somebody who understood what he needed.
     
    His family had never gotten the hang of that, of thinking about ways to arrange their part of a conversation so that Joey could handle his part more easily. They just expected him to keep up, or they didn’t, but unless his answer was expressly needed, they didn’t much bother with him.
     
    It wasn’t their fault, really. They were a big family, and he didn’t want them all sitting around focused on him all the time. Everybody had always had to fight—for second helpings at meals, for parental attention, for their voice to be heard. It was why they were all so loud and chaotic. They all just got louder and more boisterous until they had the attention they wanted. Joey had been like that, too.
     
    In fact, he’d been good at it—eating fast, talking fast, making the most noise. He’d learned early that being the youngest of four boys meant a hard scramble against bigger, stronger opponents. They all had their roles in the family: Carlo was the brain, Luca the brawn, John the good son. As for his sisters, Carmen was the replacement mother and Rosa the baby.
     
    That had left clown for Joey. So that was what he’d been.
     
    Until the shooting. After that, he’d just been…nothing.
     
    Walking to the parking lot with those melancholy thoughts vying for attention, Joey wondered if he really did want to open himself up to the dangers of trying to connect with someone. He was just getting his feet under him from the last time, and that had sent him into a years-long death spiral.
     
    Then they got to Tina’s car, and he smiled. She drove a Mustang. Just a couple years old. Dark red. Seeing that shiny muscle car pulled his attention back to the cool chick he’d just had a nice dinner with. If it had been a date, it had been his first in years, and his first good one in longer than that. Fuck, it had been his first time eating with someone other than family in nearly that long.
     
    She unlocked her car and opened the door. While he tried to decide how he wanted to say goodbye, Joey handed her the box of leftover pizza, and she leaned in and set it on the passenger seat.
     
    Her ass was right there, cute and firm, but he tried not to notice it.
     
    She stood again, and he prepared himself for the likelihood that she would just say ‘bye’ and get into her car, and that would be the end of the night. Instead, she closed the door and leaned back against it.
     
    Tucking her hair behind her ears, she looked up at him. “Joey, can I ask you a question?”
     
    He nodded.
     
    “Did we just have a date?”
     
    He wanted to ask her what she thought, if she wanted it to be a date. But he decided that he was not a kid with time to play games. He’d be thirty-six in a few weeks, and he needed to decide to have a life and live it or give up and wait to die.
     
    Every day, he had to make that decision. Multiple times a day. Every time a workout made his chest ache, every time he looked around at the people who were stronger, heartier, easier than he was, every time he had to use his tank to breathe, every time he struggled to speak and saw that glaze of bored